solitary_summer | Entries tagged with erich fromm

Tired & lazy, all day.

I'm not a technophobe by any means, but I hate, and I'm almost tempted to search the thesaurus for an even stronger expression of dislike, mobile phones. As far as I'm personally concerned I resent the expectation of constant availability that comes with owning one, and more generally speaking they're a constant source of unasked-for TMI and annoyance. I'm aware that as a lj user complaining about other people's lack of ~~shame~~ sense of privacy is at the very least somewhat hypocritical, but then again I'm not forcing anyone to read about my embarrassing neuroses and/or boring life. Sadly noisy phone users don't come with a back button or a close browser window option.

When I'm in a bookstore, I don't want to hear about your grocery shopping or the childbirth of your friend, thankyouverymuch. And that's not touching upon all the conversations I've been trying (and failing) not to overhear at work.

[ / rant ]

So. Anime. I never got the manga/anime thing, despite its increasing popularity, but chalked it up either to age or to having been brought up with a wholly different system of aesthetics... Now I've been catching 'X' on and off on VIVA recently, and as it turns out anime is apparently yet another acquired taste, because today I kept thinking that some of the images were in fact rather striking... :: sigh ::, I think.

50bookchallenge:

#16: Arthur Schnitzler, Lieutenant Gustl

#17: Thomas Mann, Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull

#18: Thomas Mann, Tagebücher 1953 - 1955

Strange, in several respects, to be reading the 1918 - 1921 volume now...

#19: Thomas Mann, Der Erwählte

I was a little wary of this one because of the religious subject matter, but thoroughly enjoyed it; gently ironic, often highly amusing, yet touching at the same time.

#20: Erich Fromm, Psychoanalyse und Religion

Interesting. I'm not sure to what extent there still exists a controversy between psychoanalysis and (christian) religion, but it helped putting into perspective my perhaps too extreme baby-with-the-bathwater attitude towards religion, by making a distinction between harmful authoritarian systems, whether they are 'religious' or 'secular', and the concern for humanity and the human soul, for truth and love, whether it comes in the guise of religion, philosophy or psychoanalysis. I don't think I ever will (or should) overcome my distrust and dislike of the former, but Fromm's writings made me realise that there's another side to it, too, or rather, a realm of thought opening up beyond the historic, literal and limiting elements of organised religion, helping me gain a more balanced and open-minded outlook instead of knee-jerk automatic rejection.

In the face of today's prevailing materialism and disillusioned cynicism words like truth and love, concern for the human soul and its growth ring almost old-fashionedly idealistic, but that doesn't make them any less imperative IMO. And seeing as the old argument that atheism automatically must mean a lack of ethic standards still crops up now and then, perhaps the book's central argument isn't as dated as it may seem at first glance...

Current Music: gideon klein

Bought a basket.

Still feeling... happy, smiling at the world.

Reading E. Fromm's Haben oder Sein (To Have Or to Be?). It's almost frightening, but satisfactory at the same time - even while I'm aware I'm far from living his ideas, I've never read an author whose worldview / theories / beliefs fit me so well, in the sense that they allow me to reconcile parts of my personality I thought were at odds, even irreconcilable, or maybe lost, my younger self and my recent self. It's like looking through a prism and suddenly seeing yourself whole where you only saw parts before, or shuffling pieces around and suddenly discover they fit. Seeing a process that led up to something, a foundation, upon which I can build.

The last author who changed my worldview like this was N.Elias, in the sense of shattering my subjectivism; but this, too fits & needed to happen.

It's almost too easy, I sometimes feel I should be wary.

I wonder, too, if it'll last.

[I guess it's probably no coincidence, that this all happenes after I gave up on the diss, though it's not quite clear to me, why, or how. Not so long ago I thought the diss was central to my self-image, my self-respect. I can only presume between the pressure to meet expectations not necessarily my own and the guilt trip it took up too much of my mental energy? But it was a necessary part of my life, too. This doesn't feel like resignation or defeat, rather like rediscovering a person I had lost far too long, with the added experience of what I learned since.]

More in TM's diaries at work, because I was too tired for anything philosophical. Still unable to define exactly why I enjoy reading them, except maybe in a roundabout way: I realise this isn't quite the same thing, but I remember some tv program where M. Reich-Ranicki (a great admirer of Mann), when asked if he ever met him (or would have wanted to meet him, given the chance, I forget which) said something that started with "Um *Himmels* Willen, nein!" ("For heaven's sake, no!") and went on about how supposedly everyone who did was disappointed &c.

Oscar Wilde makes Lord Wotton say something similar in The Picture of Dorian Gray, about great artist always being uninteresting and only bad ones personally fascinating.

I couldn't say how much truth there is in this, but this isn't my point. Personally, I've never managed to wholly separate my interest in a work of art from at least a certain degree of interest in the artist. And yes, especially if you're young you don't want to hear things that would knock your idol off its pedestal. But after all... So what if they're not perfect; no one is. This realisation shouldn't necessarily lead to disappointment, or loss of respect for the artist. It isn't about taking someone down, rather about appreciating them for what they are, but without blind, unreasonable idolisation. IMO this is the fascinating, the beautiful thing, the human being as a whole.

(And I think there's a lot more to be learned/understood this way.)

Does this make any sense at all?

[Will go to sleep early today & try to go running tomorrow, unless it's raining. Which the forecast says it will. Er. So much for fitness.]

Current Mood: content
Current Music: something by Gustav Mahler

Blah. This was really too vague. The apartment search will have to continue.

*headdesk*

Finished E. Fromm's Die Kunst des Liebens (The Art of Loving)

Even while he does echo some of my own apprehensions about the superficial materialism of our time, my inner historian always balks a little at those sweeping moral decline of the modern world statements (in this case, how the values and mentality of capitalist society make it impossible for us to really love), because for millennia people have always been decrying what the world was coming to, and part of me thinks it's our (my own, even) conservative tendencies that sometimes obstruct our view of possible future developments... But it might well be that he has a good point.

Also his insistence on the dichotomy of male and female and gender stereotyping (leading him to claim that real love can only happen between a man and a woman) seems a little out-dated today, and, what's more, it contradicts what he says only a few pages later about the male-female polarity within all of us. (Der Mann wie auch die Frau finden die Einheit in sich selbst nur in Gestalt der Vereinigung ihrer weiblicn und männlichen Polarität.) Not to mention it is rather presumptuous to paraphrase the myth from Plato's Symposion about how we all long to re-join the lost halves of ourselves, and purposefully neglect to mention that for Plato this didn't exclusively mean male-female, but also male-male and female-female.
But given the time the book was written, this is perhaps explicable, though even so it really makes little sense to insist on the limitation of gender in human relationships when later he proceeds to argue how our perception of god has to transcend the human way of thinking in such polarities, and argues for the inclusiveness of paradox logic instead of the exclusiveness of aristotelic logic.

These reservations made, on the whole, I found it a very inspiring book. It makes a lot of sense to me that to be able to love, you first have to be sure of yourself, instead of using the other person as a crutch or saviour; or that we have to be mature enough not to (consciously or subconsciously) expect a partner to fulfill the role of a parent. (Personally speaking, I've been realising recently to what a large degree I've been [am?] defined by my need for reassurance, for praise, something which almost certainly comes from trying to please [be loved by] my father, and never quite succeeding.)

In many ways the book was... not even so much a revelation, but a confirmation that I may be moving in the right direction, telling me that where I am is maybe not such a bad place to be, that I can proceed from there. (Explaining/justifying, too, my almost instinctive dislike for people who find it impossible to put themselves in another's place, who cannot look at the world with any degree of objectivity and humility.)

Maybe my break from academia was the right decision - I've come to think it made me realise things about myself I might not have seen, if I'd focused all my mental energy on my diss, especially as I'm not sure at all to what extent the whole archaeology thing wasn't tied up with my parental issues, trying to do something my father wanted to do himself, but wasn't allowed to by his father. Maybe I can break this chain of cross-generation neuroses.

Current Mood: thoughtful

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

life without a plot

Entries tagged with erich fromm

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Profile

March 2013

Syndicate

Expand Cut Tags

life without a plot

Entries tagged with erich fromm

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Profile

March 2013

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags